[solved] Creating two profiles in standalone Zotero creates two profiles in Firefox too
I am using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and standalone Zotero 5.0.80
I have created two Zotero profiles following https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/multiple_profiles. These two profiles are located in two custom directories. I can start them independently following https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/multiple_instances.
The unexpected outcome is that, when I start Firefox (70.0.1), a dialogue window asks me to choose between two profiles with the Zotero profile names.
To me this looks like an unwanted intrusion of Zotero into the settings of Firefox, and causes or will cause confusion. Any suggestion about how to safely restore the way Firefox used to work earlier? And how to avoid that it happens again?
Suggestion, directions and corrections welcome.
I have created two Zotero profiles following https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/multiple_profiles. These two profiles are located in two custom directories. I can start them independently following https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/multiple_instances.
The unexpected outcome is that, when I start Firefox (70.0.1), a dialogue window asks me to choose between two profiles with the Zotero profile names.
To me this looks like an unwanted intrusion of Zotero into the settings of Firefox, and causes or will cause confusion. Any suggestion about how to safely restore the way Firefox used to work earlier? And how to avoid that it happens again?
Suggestion, directions and corrections welcome.
~/.mozilla/firefox
or~/.zotero/zotero
? (You can cancel out without deleting anything.)The trouble is that the second profile in Firefox is linked to my second profile in Zotero as I can see from the path, as @dstillman suggested. So, if I want to remove my parasitic profile in Firefox, I would delete the Zotero database too -- which is not good.
~/.zotero/zotero
? But the first one is in~/.mozilla/firefox
? If you look in~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini
, do you see a full path in~/.zotero/zotero
listed on thePath
line for the second profile instead of just a directory name?Re Zotero there is a single profile directory in ~/.zotero/zotero, namely 123xyz.default.
The data are elsewhere and no longer in the default ~/Zotero directory.
Re Firefox and the original profile, the dialogue window proposes to delete the profile directory in ~/mozilla/firefox/456pqr.default; for the second profile it proposes to delete the path to the data directory of Zotero, not to the Zotero profile. Indeed the profiles.ini file in the Firefox directory contains
[Profile1]
Name=(name second user)
IsRelative=0
Path=(path to Zotero data directory)
I imagine I can safely delete this entry in ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini?
In sum, for future readers, the text file ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini got corrupted accidentally; have a look if it contains inconsistent information and possibly edit to restore the entries in accordance with common sense. I deleted the odd entry and it worked for me. Thanks @dstillman for sparring and assisting.